One of the attractions of our getting hooked on a series of novels with a recurring protagonist is the reassurance that once every year or so we'll have a friend to catch up with. What we don't like to think about is how it'll feel when that friend is in bad shape.

The Wings of the Sphinx is the 11th of Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano novels. (The next four in the series await what falls on the ear of this non-Italian-speaking reader as Stephen Sartarelli's graceful translating.) In this one, Montalbano's state of mind goes beyond his usual benevolent crankiness. Neither a tyrant nor a pushover, he's dogged, intolerant of fools, devoted (in spirit, at least) to long-distance girlfriend Livia, a man who approaches a meal as Casanova approached a woman — that is, with the finesse of those who are able to savor as they satisfy their hunger. He's one of the most grounded characters in contemporary popular fiction.

So to open The Wings of the Sphinx and read on the first page that "nowadays early mornings very often inspired a feeling of refusal in him, a sort of instinctive rejection of what awaited him once he was forced to accept the new day, even if there were no particular hassles awaiting him in the hours ahead" is to be thrown immediately off guard. If Montalbano can't get out of bed in the morning, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Part of the pleasure of these books, which are set in an imaginary Sicilian town, is the deep appreciation of life they convey. (Although they're very different in tone, you could say the same of the late Magdalen Nabb's Marshal Guarnaccia volumes, which are set in Florence.) Camilleri is not the crime writer to pick up for hard-boiled mayhem. The Montalbano books are procedurals, most of them resolved with little additional bloodshed. As with a lot of series books, the appeal for long-time readers is in being once again in company you like.

The mystery here concerns a young woman found dead whose only identifying feature is a sphinx-moth tattoo on her back. Soon Montalbano hears about two young women with identical tattoos who have vanished. It's not giving away much to say that the solution has something to do with the sex trade. But this is where Camilleri's becalmed perspective comes in. The ugliness of human trafficking has inspired rescue fantasies in novelists and journalists alike. Camilleri doesn't editorialize.

What's more important in The Wings of the Sphinx is its portrait of a man with innate equilibrium suddenly finding that the ground beneath his feet has turned to choppy seas. As a mystery, the novel is a deftly executed entertainment. As a portrait of the particular uncertainties of middle age, it's subtle and very moving. The emphasis on mood, on the nuances of human exchange, on the sudden perceptions where you see yourself clearly if not as you'd like to be seen — all of this might be at home in those accomplished novels of manners that English female writers have so long been good at. Like their efforts, The Wings of the Sphinx offers human-scaled satisfaction, the kind you get from an observer who knows the precise balance between shrewdness and compassion. If there's such a thing as a rueful entertainer, Camilleri is one.

Ghost stories For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.

Wanting more After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.

Two sides of life "I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist," the Pop artist Andy Warhol wrote in 1975. "Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art."

2009: The year in dance You could say there were two tremendous forces that propelled dance into the world of modern culture: the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev and the choreography of Merce Cunningham.

Hearts and souls (and laughs too) It's been a good year for theater around here — an ingeniously roasted dramatic chestnut here, a new and safely landed flight of fancy there. Below are 10 productions that particularly stood out.

Big starts I kick off my highlights of 2009 with praise for a theater company that has just finished its inaugural season: The Legacy Theater Company, founded by former City Theater artistic director Steve Burnette.

KATE BEYOND TIME: THE KATE MOSS BOOK | January 08, 2013 Almost all models who achieve some degree of fame find themselves blamed for whatever agenda their era's most vocal scold happens to be pushing.

INTERVIEW: NINA HOSS ON BARBARA | December 18, 2012 Quietly over the last 11 years, one of the strongest collaborations in contemporary cinema has been developing between the German director Christian Petzold and the actress he often chooses to star in his films, Nina Hoss. Petzold and Hoss's latest collaboration, Barbara , is their richest and finest film.

SLIDESHOW: THE CHEAP NEAR-THRILLS OF SEXYTIME | December 14, 2012 With porn so privately accessible now, we don't worry about the stigma attached to its consumption, the thought of someone pausing to peruse the art in front of an adult movie theater (hell, the thought of an adult movie theater) instead of just ducking in before being seen is almost touching.

BUNNY YEAGER’S NAKED AMBITION | October 05, 2012 Pin-up photography has served so many purposes — outlet for male desire; outlet for feminist ire; retro kitsch emblem — that it has barely been talked about as photography.